The Auctioneer

by Joan Samson

  Paul Geness let the child in his lap slide to the floor. He squinted up at Perly with his close-set brown eyes. Geness had eleven children. He managed by looking after the town dump and salvaging what other people threw away.

  “I said, ‘Isn’t that right, Paul?’ ”

  Geness opened his mouth but didn’t answer.

  “I know it hasn’t been easy,” Perly cried. “But we’re undergoing the fastest change in the history of civilization. All I want to do is harness that change. Make it work for all of us. And I pride myself I’ve made a beginning. A fine beginning.” Perly raised his fist and slammed it down into his other hand. “But since when have the people of Harlowe been so fond of their creature comforts? Since when have the people of Harlowe been afraid of a little hard work? Since when?”

  Perly’s voice grew louder and deeper. “A few have even run away. Well, damn it, if they’re that low-minded, we don’t want them. Do we, Frank?” he asked, pointing a strong brown finger at Frank Lovelace, a stocky man who had been a fairly efficient truck farmer before the auctions.

  Lovelace was not a talkative man, and now he shifted in his chair, tightened his lips, and swallowed.

  “And now this madness,” the auctioneer cried, his voice seeming to come from everywhere at once. “This insanity. This lunacy.” He shook his head as if to rid himself of his vision, then looked out over the people with an intensity that made them turn away from him.

  He pulled a sheaf of bills from his shirt pocket. “Well, here’s three thousand dollars,” he said. He held the bills high so that everyone could see that they were hundred-dollar bills. “Three thousand dollars,” he repeated, playing his eyes over the crowd. “Anyone gone by your place at an odd hour? Anyone smelling of gasoline lately? Anyone in your house acting peculiar this last week?”

  Perly focused on a heavily made-up woman sitting next to her husband, who had recently had a leg amputated after falling under his tractor. “What do you say, Jane Collins? Do you know anyone sleeping all day?” he asked. “Do you?”

  She dropped her eyes and shook her head. Her husband gripped his crutches and looked at the chair in front of him.

  “Let us know,” Perly said, his voice low and smooth. “We’ll pay cash and we’ll pay in secret. Trust us.” He snapped the elastic band back around the bills and returned them to his pocket so that the figure “100” poked out with its elegant elongated zeros. “Does anyone have any questions?” Perly asked.

  No one made any noticeable move, but no one was quite still either, and the stiff folding chairs gave off a sound like radio static.

  “Well, then, we ask you for your own protection to get right on home. The deputies will be making rounds in about half an hour to make sure you all arrive safely.”

  The people of Harlowe sat in their chairs as though they had not heard their dismissal.

  “Good night,” Perly said more gently. “We’re all in this together. Let’s try to remember Harlowe’s heritage of strength and courage. We’ll make a new beginning yet.”

  Perly started off the stage, and very slowly the people in the hall began to pull their coats around their shoulders and stand up.

  “Hey there, young fellow,” said a voice from behind the Moores. “Them proposals you’re makin’. They supposed to be laws or what? It was Sam Parry. His sky-blue eyes were as piercing as ever, but he was less ruddy than usual after taking a bullet in the shoulder during hunting season. “We goin’ to get a chance to vote on them new rules?”

  Perly paused and smiled a moment at Sam before he returned to the center of the stage. “Vote, Sam?” he said. “Who could possibly object? Simple temporary regulations for the protection of all of us. But, of course, if you think we should take a vote, let’s take a vote. Perly looked out at the townspeople as though they were co-conspirators. “Why not?” he said. “All in favor, say ‘Aye.’ ”

  There was a pause, then Ian James shouted a throaty aye and there were scattered echoes around the room.

  “All opposed, say ‘Nay.’ ”

  There was silence in the room.

  “Sam?” Perly said at last, raising an eyebrow in challenge to the old man.

  “Well, I’m opposed,” Sam said abruptly and sat down.

  After a pause, Ma lifted her cane high and pointed it unsteadily at Perly. “I’d just like to know why it’s you, Mr. Perly Dunsmore, that wants so bad to catch that firebug,” she cried, her voice harsh with effort. “Ain’t nobody set fire to your house.”

  Fanny Linden, sitting in front of the Moores, ducked to avoid the cane, and Mim grabbed at it and lowered it to the floor against Ma’s struggles.

  “Mrs. Moore,” Perly cried, his hard face twisted, “how can you ask? Harlowe is my town. You were here and never had a choice, but I chose Harlowe. After twenty years in forty different countries, I chose Harlowe to be my home. And to a bachelor like me, a community is mother, father, son, and daughter. Its my family.”

  Dixie turned nervously at Perly’s side, but Perly stood easily. “Now I know what’s going on in the world. And if you turn on your television set at night, almost any night, you can see too. You see a picture of young America—usually violence, rebellion, shouting obscenities. This is the new wave. These things are happening everywhere. But Harlowe—Harlowe is hanging on to the old ways. And now this quality of life—this treasuring of human values—is in danger. Nothing can be the same with everyone living in terror of his neighbors. And, if a place isn’t good for my neighbors, it’s not going to be good for me either. That’s why I care, Mrs. Moore. I can’t think of a better use for my money than to save our community.”

  “He gave the town the ambulance, didn’t he?” called Tom Pulver, a short barrel-chested man who had lost his barn and part of his house in the fires.

  “And glad enough I was too, when my father took pneumonia,” said Vera Janus.

  Perly watched, his eyes unblinking as onyx.

  Sam Parry was standing again. “Course, if you ain’t got a phone, you can’t phone up for the ambulance. Not that I’m complainin’. My old jeep was plenty good enough to get me to the hospital. And, of course, ain’t nobody offered a reward yet for the damn fool as shot me. And it ain’t strictly necessary neither to be wanderin about in the dark to get shot at these days. I managed it just by goin’ out to my own pump house in broad daylight, now, didn’t I?” Sam put his good hand to his forehead and shook his white mane vigorously. “But I’m gettin’ off the track. Just like me to be gettin’ off the track.”

  Sam paused and the crowd murmured.

  Anyhow, he went on, “what it was I wanted to say is how come its Perly up there? He ain’t town moderator, as I recall. He ain’t a selectman. Why he ain’t even a cop, though we got so many nowadays. What the dickens is he doin’ runnin’ this here town meetin’?” Sam finished and scowled around at his neighbors.

  The answer came, finally, from Ian James, a burly deputy who had been elected to serve as selectman for eight terms running. “Jimmy Carroll’s supposed to be moderator,” he said, standing in his place behind the Moores. “And he’s moved away. As for selectmen, Wards out of town, and old Ike Linden’s been sick. So looks like that leaves me. And I hereby appoint Perly moderator. And anyway, it’s only regular town meetin’s got to be run that way. And it’s Red, not Perly, who’s runnin’ the meetin’.”

  Perly smiled gently at Sam. “Who’d you have in mind, Sam?” he asked. “Yourself, perhaps?”

  Slowly, the old man sat down. There was no laughter. The rows of faces tilting toward the auctioneer were stolid and noncommittal.

  Mudgett stepped up to Perly and darted a sideways glance at him. “I guess we all ought to give Perly a hand,” he announced.

  Again, nobody moved.

  Perly pulled himself up and his black eyes seemed to penetrate and tally the refusal of every person there to start the applause. “Of course you feel angry,” he acknowledged. “Some of you even suspect that I’m personally to blame. You
need to blame someone for the evils of the twentieth century—and you include these fires among them.

  “But, believe me, someday you’ll understand what I’ve been doing. Movers and shakers have always had their enemies at first.

  “Five years from now, in the new Harlowe, every person in town will leap at the chance to give me a standing ovation.”

  Dixie got to her feet and shook herself, and Perly moved smoothly toward the New Hampshire flag and the steps down into the audience.

  “Wait just a minute,” said someone near the back and everyone turned, recognizing the voice instantly—the flat matter-of-fact voice of one complacent in his power. It was Dr. Hastings. “Har-lowe’s got more cops per capita these days than New York City,” he said. “It’s got three sophisticated patrol cars, a radio-alert system, and a network of what we used to call ‘informers, which seems to include about half of Harlowe. I’d like to know why, with a force like that, the cops are having so much trouble catching one lousy firebug.”

  “Give us a chance,” said Ezra Stone. The big deputy sat on a high stool near the wood stove with his arms folded. “Don’t worry. We’ll catch him.”

  “And,” said the doctor, without even turning to nod to Stone, “as the doctor around here, I’d like to know how come the more cops we get, the more accident prone we seem to become.”

  Perly had returned to the center of the stage and stood there, his eyes glistening on the doctor.

  Dr. Hastings peered back unflinching behind his glasses. “And incidentally,” he added, “I’d also like to know why so many of my longest-standing patients are moving out of town.”

  “If you want to make comparisons,” Perly said in his cool luminous voice, “have you looked at the per capita statistics for New York City on arson—let alone mugging, rape, murder, armed robbery? Why a New Yorker can hardly expect to get through a month in peace. Harlowe may be facing the first serious problem in its history, but most places are exploding with crime. And the reason, Doctor, that we’re better off than most, is that in a country town like this people act promptly before things get out of hand.” Perly held out his arms to include all the people in the hall. “People in the country know what brotherhood means,” he said.

  “Everyone takes an interest in his neighbors. It’s the good will in a town like this that’s going to help us put an end to these fires. And, as for moving around, people still don’t move around half as—”

  “There he goes again,” shouted Ma. “Standin’ words on their head. Down comes out up. Wrong comes out right. Shoot you in the back comes out the Sermon on the Mount.”

  Perly shook his head at Ma. “Slipping,” he commented to the doctor.

  John sprang from his seat and stood facing the auctioneer.

  “Ask him about the auctions,” Sam Parry growled before John could think what to say.

  The auctions? asked Perly, breaking into a jaunty smile and ignoring John. “Now you’re on my favorite subject. What about them? Never a town loved an auction like Harlowe. When I came here, I had in mind three—maybe four—auctions. But you folks just wouldn’t let me quit. Oh, I paid for everything. Maybe that’s why you kept showering stuff on me. All I did was float along on the crest of the wave. And a wonderful ride it was—the most American experience anyone can have. It’s like the very eye of a hurricane—where the sellers and buyers come to terms.”

  “Ask him how bloody much he paid,” Sam Parry shouted.

  Perly turned on him with his quick black look, then gestured to the people in the hall with quiet control. “Nobody has ever complained,” he said slowly. “Of course, I am a newcomer. My knowledge of prices around here is limited. But just let me ask. Is there anyone here who ever complained?”

  In the silence, a log settled in the wood stove with a crash. Perly, standing light on the toes of his boots, leaned down over the people spread out below him. “Did anyone ever complain?” he repeated.

  Finally, he put his hand on Dixie’s head and turned to Mudgett with a smile.

  Ma had been shaking her head. Now she started to bang her cane on the floor, her gray head bobbing angrily over it. Everyone turned again to look at the Moores. Mim sat perfectly still. She felt she’d been caught in this moment a dozen times before, with the jacklight and the gunsights trained full on her. “Ma, please,” she murmured.

  “I complained,” Ma cried, her voice hoarse. I complained loud and clear. Just like I’m a complainin right this minute.”

  Mim put a restraining hand on her knee, but she brushed it off.

  “Mrs. Moore...” said Perly, raising his brows and lowering his voice. “You didn’t complain when I made you a gift of a more comfortable couch.” He raised his head to the hall and said, “Mrs. Moore’s losing her grip... .”

  “The hell she is,” John cried, still on his feet.

  Nearby, Cogswell lifted his flask to his mouth in a sudden sweeping motion, tipped it back, and drank. Then he put the cover on, wiped his face on his sleeve, and pulled himself to his feet. “She complained all right,” he said. “And if there ain’t too many did, it’s because the pickup men had their orders. We had to make sure every soul knew about them accidents. Every time people got in a mood to complain, they heard about another accident.”

  Perly straightened up in horror. Good God, Mickey, he cried. “You are muddled. We had to demote Mickey,” he announced to the townspeople. “I offered to send him on a cure, but he insisted he didn’t have a problem. In fact, he’s been nursing a grudge against me for even suggesting it.”

  Cogswell swayed slightly as he faced the auctioneer.

  “You see...” Perly said, gesturing sadly.

  But the people kept their eyes on Perly.

  “He turned us into a pack of thieves,” Mickey muttered.

  “Well, why’d you let him?” shouted Arthur Stinson, clapping a hand over his mouth before he was quite finished. Stinson had married four years ago at sixteen, and, despite a reputation as a hothead, he had settled down and managed to support his young wife and then his child as a general repairman.

  “I didn’t see you sayin no either,” cried Sonny Pike, standing in his place and leaning toward Stinson over the sling that still held his wounded arm. “You think we liked it? We thought we was doin’ the town a favor. By the time we found out different... Well, look what happened to the Carrolls when Jimmy quit.”

  Perly watched the exchange, his chiseled features composed. “Sonny’s lost his nerve,” he said in an even voice. “Nothing’s quite so shattering as a secret ambush.”

  Sonny dropped his eyes and shook his head, but remained on his feet, his free hand resting heavily on the chair in front of him.

  “It’s hard...” soothed Perly.

  “And what about them children, Perly Dunsmore?” Ma cried, her question rasping through the hall. “What about them children?”

  Dixie began to whine, but Perly almost visibly relaxed. Without taking his eyes off Ma, he motioned to Dixie to lie down. He spread his feet wide and put his hands in his pockets so that he was planted firmly in the center of the stage. He waited. In the shadow of the American flag, Mudgett began to jiggle his foot impatiently.

  When Perly spoke, his voice was low and easy. “Naturally, it’s hard for someone nearly eighty to keep up with the new ways,” he said. “Still, it makes me sad. Mrs. Moore is a symbol to me of everything I’m trying to save in this town.”

  John was still standing in his place, hugging himself with both arms. But Perly looked at Ma, and a pale pink flush spread across her face. Mim, sitting near her, could feel her tremble.

  “She asked about the children,” Perly said. “I’m glad she asked about the children. I’m proud of my—”

  “We seen him Tuesday,” John interrupted. “Sellin’ children at auction just like slaves. One of them Jimmy Carroll’s—”

  “Like slaves!” Perly cried. He took his hands out of his pockets and leaned toward the townspeople. “What was I to do with
those children?” he asked, indignant. “Me. A bachelor. Me, who never had wife nor child. Me, who’d love so much to have some children of my own. You all know I love children. Hildie Moore can tell you I love children. Mickey Cogswell’s poor neglected little ones can tell you I love children. But what kind of a life can I offer a child? Two young mothers came to me with their children. What should they do, they asked me. They couldn’t look after their children. Just couldn’t manage. What was I supposed to say? All I could think of to suggest was that people sometimes adopt children.”

  Perly paused. “And those mothers begged me to find good people to adopt their children. Now I’m no social agency. I know that. But Harlowe doesn’t have a social agency. Maybe someday, if my changes go through, we will. But those parents couldn’t wait. I’ve been around. I have some money. So they came to me. And, by golly, I found those children homes. Good homes, with parents who were eager to love them, and able to support them in style. What more could I do? What does this town want of me?” Perly stopped. He was breathing hard, his face dark.

  People shifted before him like reprimanded children. John and Mickey and Sonny Pike were still standing, high and conspicuous among the seated townspeople.

  “Ask him,” Mickey said, his voice fuzzy, but his head erect with the easy confidence of a man who has always been a favorite, “ask him how he got people to part with their own flesh and blood. That took more than talk.”

  “Ah, Mickey,” Perly said, his anger apparently lapsing. “You mean well by your children, for all your problems. If only everyone were as loving a parent as you.” And Perly looked over the townspeople almost wearily, as if he were looking in vain for loving parents.

  “Look at Sally Rouse, a settin’ there as slim as ever,” said Fanny Linden. Fanny didn’t stand. She sat perfectly still and subjected Perly to the flat uncompromising stare familiar to everyone who had ever tried to bargain with her as she sat on her high stool behind the counter in the store. “Ask Sally how he done it and what he paid with. She must think I ain’t got a woman’s eyes in my head. Ain’t more than a month ago, she was prancing around the store, far gone. But I don’t see as she’s got no baby with her now. So I ask you where that baby went to.”